Mia Brownell, a Chicago-based artist and daughter of a sculptor and biophysicist, has a new body of work that she says “simultaneously draw on scientific images of platelets (tiny blood cells shaped like plates) and the history of the painted food still life.” The new series is called “Plate to Platelets: and other things that travel and bind,” and it features several new palette paintings. Brownell is featured in the Hi-Fructose Collected 4 Boxset.
“My inspirations focus on the 17th century still life tradition of plates being painted on the precipice of a table’s edge (often looking like they are about to fall) and how platelets rush to the site of damage to repair,” she says. “I fantasize about what the cultural/social equivalents to platelets could be, as well as, other things that travel and bind in and outside of our bodies. These paintings dissect and interweave fundamental elements of nature, food, and culture – of movement, and impulse – that might be labeled theatric. My motivations stem from the confluences between the seductive excesses of food culture, the vanity and illusionism of traditional still life painting, and the constructed spaces of computer generated scientific imaging.”
The artist has two shows coming up in Denver with pieces from this body of work: at The Fulginiti Pavilion for Bioethics and Humanities University of Colorado at Denver (Jan. 11-March 8) and Goodwin Fine Art (Jan. 12-Feb. 24).
Serge Gay Jr. offers a love letter to resort city Palm Springs in his new show, "P.S. I Love You," at Voss Gallery. Bathed in sunshine and a Mid-Century Modern sensibility, the works are a stirring blend of acrylics and graphite. “Popularized in the 1930s as a fashionable getaway for the Hollywood elite, the human-built utopia has become a haven for creatives lured to the vast desert as an artistic escape and source for inspiration,” the gallery says. The show, which begins on Oct. 11, runs through Nov. 2 at the San Francisco space.
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Christian Vincent’s paintings carry whimsy and melancholy, the artist playing with light and perspective in scenes from the everyday. Surrealism is typical in Vincent’s work, yet at varying degrees. The overall essence plays into the function of memory and how we fill in details with the perspectives of both then and now.